Friday, October 19, 2007

The Afternoon of the Living Dead

Oh Amaterasu, let my math be wrong. Do not tell me that come March we the taxpayers will have shoveled 1.5 TRILLION yen into the Jūsen.

According to an article from the Sankei Shimbun Online, even after bailing out the amakudari archipelagojūtakukinyū senyō gaisha (or jūsen, for short) in 1996, the taxpayers have been quietly covering annual financial losses of the seven bust housing loan companies, with this year's contribution adding up to an infuriating 275 billion yen.

This is a scandal so so old it should be collecting pension payments (it is so old, the Ministry of Finance page in English supposedly explaining it has vanished). Instead, these crappy little financial institutions are stiffing the Japanese citizenry non erit finis.

Someone please explain to me again how the public's steadfast refusal to bail out these institutions, a wish overridden by the political classes and the bureaucracy, demonstrated the public's startling naïveté and petty vindictiveness?